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Month: April 2015

Last month, I told you about a simple invitation that strengthened bonds of friendship. This month’s story contains a special surprise that was nearly impossible to keep secret!

Staying in the bed and breakfast that I described in a previous post is something my mother has only experienced once in her lifetime. The image of her walking in the fifteen-foot high entrance door with her suitcase and looking around with wide eyes of amazement is something I will never forget.

So as I think about plans for our annual spring “girl trip,” I talk to my husband, who agrees we should splurge and surprise her with a second stay. I immediately go online. Arrangements are made. Anticipation grows…

There are close calls during conversations with my daughter:

“Where are we staying?” she asks.

“Where do we usually stay?” I counter before quickly changing the subject. “Will you please put this clean laundry up in your room?”

There are unexpected phone calls from the incredible inn hostess, Rebecca:

Mom pulls my phone out of my purse because I’m driving. “Your phone says ‘Wildwood B&B’…Isn’t that the bed and breakfast? Why would they be calling you? Are you up to something?”

“Oh,” I respond, “I looked at several places on the internet when I was making our reservations, and I left a comment on her website. Isn’t she so sweet to call me? What a nice lady she is!” (Well, that is all true…I just left out the part about booking rooms at that particular location.)

We finally end up at the Inn under the ruse of showing the place to my daughter’s friend, despite my mother’s protests: “I’m not bothering these nice people. They are so busy and will be checking in guests soon. I’ll wait here for you.”

“Hmmm…she won’t get out of the car,” I think to myself. “How do I work this one out?”

The girls and I get out, cameras in hand, and walk around the corner of the building toward the front entrance.

A wonderful staff lady pops out the front door, introduces herself as Charlotte, calls me by name, and ushers us in the front door to show us around, while the girls march up the porch steps behind me and look at each other in confusion.

I reveal the big surprise to the girls and soak in their squeals of delight, causing Charlotte’s jaw to drop. “They didn’t know?! You are a tricky one!”

We head back out the door to gather my mother. I ask Charlotte if she will break the news to Mom, and I give her a suggestion of what to say. She is immediately on board with the idea.

She strides up to my mother’s open car window with a hearty, “Hello! Welcome! Since you’re here, why don’t you just go ahead and stay?”

I have already leaned my head into the driver’s window, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, fully expecting my mother to turn around and yell at me for tricking her. Instead, I barely can make out the words, “Oh, no, we can’t. We already have reservations at a hotel, but thank you.”

Charlotte looks across at me helplessly, so I add, “No, Mom, maybe we should just go ahead and stay HERE. Yeah, we should do that!”

She turns to me with her brows furrowed together. The instant she sees my painfully-wide grin, her expression changes. “You did it AGAIN, didn’t you? You sneaky rat! Are we staying here?”

“Yes we are!” I exclaim triumphantly.

We all burst out laughing, and happy tears glisten in our eyes as another special mother-daughter-granddaughter trip is off to a great start…

You’ve likely heard the saying “The third time is a charm.” Well, for me, staying at the Wildwood Bed & Breakfast for the third time was every bit as charming as the first two visits. I mentioned in a previous post that it was time for my family’s annual “girl trip” to Hot Springs, Arkansas. We are back, and we had a wonderful time, especially since we booked special accommodations again for this year’s trip.

If you have never stayed the night at a bed and breakfast, you are missing out on something great. If you’ve enjoyed the bed and breakfast experience but have never stayed at the 1884 Wildwood Bed & Breakfast Inn in Hot Springs, AR, you are still missing out! I don’t usually like to advertise anything, but I cannot help but share this jewel in central Arkansas in case any of you are ever in the area and might be able to stay in one of the quaint rooms there.

The hosts, David and Rebecca, will make you feel like a welcome family member. Rebecca’s three-course breakfasts are incredible, and her lively, expert tour of the house will take you on a fascinating trip back in time through the history of the property and the town.

Hot Springs is a fun town to visit, with a little something to entertain everyone, from its unique historical sites, to hot mineral baths and massages, national forest nature walks, interesting architecture, tourist and other shopping, nearly any restaurant you can imagine, rock and crystal shops, tours across land an water on “duck boats,” an alligator petting zoo, Pirate’s Cove miniature golf, the Magic Springs theme park, and a 250-foot-tall observation tower, all nestled in and around the wooded hills and beautiful lakes of central Arkansas.

That was a mouthful, wasn’t it? Suffice it to say, even with (nearly) annual visits to the town since 2007, my family has never run out of things to do and see. Staying at the Wildwood Bed & Breakfast Inn is the icing on the cake that makes the trip a complete joy for my family and friends! If you or someone you know plans to visit the area, please check out their web site and see if you’d like to book a room. I highly recommend it.

If you’ve looked at my blog before, you know I’ve become a shutterbug, especially for macro photography. I think I took close to 600 photos during our three-day vacation. I have enough photos and stories to write posts about Hot Springs until we (hopefully) go back next spring…

…but I won’t do that to you! 😉

As promised in a pre-vacation post, I would like to share some of my photos with you, though. These are all from the B&B (scroll over or click on photos to see more info):

It’s been weird around here. I’m wondering if it will be June before I get to plant a garden! I usually plant around April 15th.

As I was attempting to capture a neighbor’s escaped rooster, which was passionately dancing up and down the fence for our hens, these strange clouds blew in.

I used PicMonkey to “stitch” together four shots of this unusual cloud formation.

I shot several photos before the growing roars of thunder drove me inside.

The rolled-up line of clouds blew by quickly.

A few moments later, here came a blast wind and of nickel-sized hail, spooking the poor rooster down the street.

The photo is of poor quality, so I marked a few of the falling pieces of hail for you.

After only three or four minutes, the hail changed to drenching rain, melting away most of the hail stones before I was able to capture any photos worth sharing.

Upon peeking outside later, it just looked like a calm, cloudy day. The rooster was back dancing for our hens, and there wasn’t even a wisp of wind to turn the weather vane fan in my garden.

Was there a storm just a few minutes ago?

Our neighbor’s rooster is putting on quite a show for the girls. He “dances” past, drags one wing on the ground, and flicks the feathers on that wing with his foot to make a noise. All the while, he croons little songs to them. That may be appealing to a hen, but to me it looks like he’s tripped and is stumbling around trying not to fall down.

The rooster ruffles his feathers in a challenge to our dominant hen. As you can see from her calm, laser-beam glare, our hen Pepper would love nothing more than to take him down a notch, were the fence not between them. She has put more than one rooster in his place over the years.

In the last month, we’ve had temperatures ranging from the high 40s to the low 80s. One evening we are sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket with the heater on, a couple of days later, we have the air conditioner blowing. Either way, the utility companies are happy. Lol

There’s a saying I’ve heard many times over the years: “If you don’t like the weather in Arkansas, just stick around because it changes every five minutes!”

In order to fulfill a fellow-blogger’s request, I am subjecting you all to a post about my chickens. 🙂 I grew up around chickens and many other animals, and was so happy when my husband and I moved to a home where we could have chickens of our own. The antics of our hens and roos have brought a smile to my face many times over the last four years.

Our original group of chicks: a Blue Cochin, a Cuckoo Maran, an Austrolorp, a Columbian Wyandotte, and a Rhode Island Red. NOTE: This photo was taken when we first brought them home and does not show a proper setup for raising chicks.

For those of you who are thinking about getting chickens or are just beginning to care for chickens, I’d like to save you some trouble by sharing tips and tricks I learned through trial and error while raising these “pets with perks.”

What perks? If you take the time to watch them, each chicken has its own hilarious personality that provides relaxing backyard entertainment. And, of course, there’s the eggs! You’ll never want store-bought eggs again after tasting homegrown ones laid by healthy, pasture-ranged hens. None of my other pets ever gave me free breakfast every day!

The information in this and upcoming posts will not be a complete guide on chicken care. There are multiplied resources at your fingertips on the internet that provide specific, detailed information about raising chickens and dealing with sicknesses, injuries, and such. One good place for asking questions and finding helpful information is on the Back Yard Chickens website. I’ve gotten advice from many kind, helpful people on their forum.

~~~ How much trouble is it to own chickens? ~~~

I have owned many pets over the years. My husband is always accusing me of “trying to turn this place into a farm.” Our list of previous and current creature residents includes: bugs, butterflies, cats, chickens, dogs, fish, gerbils, guinea pigs, mice, slugs (Yes, you read that correctly: slugs. That’s one we will not repeat, no matter how many young, sweet children bat their long eyelashes and beg and plead for them!), and a turtle.

Of all these animals, hens come in third on my personal list of easy-to-care-for pets (add a rooster or two and things get slightly more complicated).

First is my Three-Toed Box Turtle that I’ve had for nearly 17 years. Provide some shelter and shade, keep a fresh dish of water in the pen, throw a little food in there once per day, and you’re good to go. When I keep her in an outdoor enclosure, she hibernates underground for six months of the year. Pet care doesn’t get much easier than that!

Second is an outdoor cat. They are definitely low-maintenance pets. Provide shelter, keep dishes of fresh food and water available, don’t get too attached to the beautiful birds in the yard, and you have a happy lap-warmer.

Third is, as I said, our topic for today’s post. Let me start at the beginning of my feathered friends’ journey…

~~~ Selecting chicks. ~~~

We bought our chicks from a farmer at a weekly outdoor flea market. If you have the opportunity to hand-select your chicks, look for fairly active chicks (eating, drinking, happily peeping) with clear, bright eyes, clean bottoms, and straight toes. Pick up each chick and examine it carefully. Don’t buy a chick that is extremely lethargic, cloudy-eyed, dirty around it’s bottom, wounded, or extremely loud (incessant loud chirping indicates a problem).

This brief video will give examples of happy and unhappy chick sounds:

~~~ Housing chicks. ~~~

A simple brooder for housing your chicks is a large cardboard box or plastic tub lined with newspaper. It’s best to place a layer of paper towel on top for the first couple of weeks to give the chicks more traction for walking; newspaper alone is a little too slick and can lead to splayed leg problems.

If you put multiple layers of newspaper, you can simply remove the chicks, gather up the top couple of layers by the corners, and toss the mess in the trash without having to do a major clean-up every day. Believe me, there is a lot of clean-up involved with chicks from scattering food, splashing water, and walking around on their little piles of free fertilizer. A half-and-half mixture of white vinegar and water makes a wonderful solution for cleaning their food and water dishes (and their house, if you have them in something other than a cardboard box). The acid in the vinegar kills germs and counteracts the ammonia smell from their prolific poo.

They also create tremendous amounts of dust from scratching in their feed and preening off the waxy coating that covers each new feather they grow. So, you may not want to place them in your living room near your television and electronic equipment as I did at first.

Five tiny chicks make a big mess!

A very important part of their housing is a heat source. Chicks can easily get sick and die when they become chilled (remember, they usually spend most of their first week cuddling under a mother hen who’s body temperature runs over 100 degrees Fahrenheit). You can buy an actual heat lamp with a special bulb, or use a 100-watt incandescent light bulb in a socket with a reflector around it. Place the lamp to one side of the box, so the chicks can move to the cooler side of the box when they feel too warm.

The warmest area in the box should be about 90-95 degrees the first week and be reduced by about five degrees each week. If your chicks stay huddled together as close to the light bulb as possible, their house is too cold. If the chicks are lined against the wall or panting on the far side of the box, the house is too hot. Simply raise and lower the light in the box to achieve the desired temperature.

~~~ Caring for chicks. ~~~

In addition to warm, safe housing and love and attention, you will, of course, need food and clean water. Have these available at all times, and the chicks will regulate the amount they need.

The feed can be placed in a shallow dish or lid. Actually, you could probably just pour it in a pile in their box, if you wish, because that is where they will have it all scattered within a short time. There are many commercial brands of feed to choose from. Some are medicated and some aren’t — there are pros and cons to each type. You can supplement their feed with dry oatmeal, ground flax seed, and assorted greens and weeds from a pesticide-free yard.

Place the water container in the cool end of the box, away from the heat lamp. I recommend buying a commercial waterer or making one. If you leave an open container of water in their house, they will usually find a way to spill it, which isn’t great if their home is made of cardboard! They can also fall in and get chilled or drown.

To make your own chick waterer:

Find a plastic cup with a well-sealing lid and a shallow, heavy dish that is a little larger than the top of the cup (a flat-bottomed glass candy dish works great). The plastic lids from cake frosting containers fit perfectly onto many cups I’ve owned over the years. You could also use a 32 oz plastic yogurt container or a plastic soda pop bottle.

Examples of items you can use to make a chick waterer.

A commercial waterer next to my homemade version. Mine is made from a restaurant cup, a frosting lid, and a candy dish I bought at a flea market (total cost: 50 cents). Both waterers work very well.

Cut one or two small holes (1/4 inch or so) near the top of the plastic cup, fill it with water, put the lid on it, and turn it upside down into the dish (cover the hole with your finger as you do this to keep from pouring water everywhere). Water will fill the dish until it reaches the level of the hole you made. Whenever the chicks drink (or spill) enough to lower the water level below the cup’s hole, it will automatically refill itself to the previous level.

This waterer has been raised to the correct, back-level height for our new chicks we purchased on April 25, 2015. (The yellow chick is actually a little taller than it appears in this image — it was starting to sit down when I snapped this photo.)

Too keep the water cleaner and the chicks drier, keep the lip of the waterer at the height of the chicks backs when they are standing — the same goes for adult chickens and their water buckets. You can set the waterer on top of things (small containers, bricks, etc.) to raise it higher as the chicks grow.

I’ve raised the height of the waterer once and already need to do it again. See the dish under the yellow chick’s belly in the main photo? That’s what the waterer is sitting on in the first day photo.

~~~ Fast growing, ever changing chicks. ~~~

Within a week those little balls of fluff will be sprouting wing and tail feathers and worming their way into your heart. Be prepared to get larger and taller boxes as the chicks rapidly develop. A wire top on their box will keep them from flying out as they begin testing their wings. As they grow, it’s nice to run small tree branches through the sides of the cardboard box to make tiny roosts for them; they will love it. It can be quite funny to watch them clumsily learning how to use the roosts.

Three-week-old chicks enjoying a larger home, complete with roosts.

One last thing I’ll mention about pretty little chicks is how many times their appearance will change. The colors on chicks are often completely different than their coloring as adults. The first set of feathers they get can also be very different from the patterns and colors of their feathers as adults. Colors and patterns may even vary slightly from year to year on adult chickens because they grow new feathers each fall after an annual molt.

Showing off the patterns on three-week-old “Pecky’s” wing feathers. She is a Rhode Island Red and, four years later, is still my favorite chicken. She loves to cuddle beside me when I’m relaxing and to “help” me whenever I pull weeds or dig in the yard.

~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~

UPDATES :

4/25/15 — Our two favorite hens passed away this last week. One was injured and had to be put down, and I think the other died of old age. So, today I went to the Saturday flea market and bought three chicks.

The chicks are tuckered out from their big transition to a new home.

Our new Rhode Island Red chicks — one asleep and one getting paranoid about the big camera lens in its face. (Sweet as it was, the darker chick was sold at three weeks old because he was definitely going to grow up to be a rooster. We’re taking a break from the boys at the moment.)

One hour in and this little Barred Rock chick is already my daughter’s favorite. The sleepy chick, who is now officially named “Peepers” because it is so loud, took a nap on my daughter’s shoulder.

5/25/15 — She’s growing fast! One month old, and “Peepers” still gets a shoulder ride now and then.

5/2/15 — We bought two more chicks from the same person I met last week, which was convenient so that we could place them together without worrying about any of them passing diseases to each other. We did not end up with the peaceful little flock we imagined, however. Within moments of placing the new chicks into the box, a battle ensued. This gave me an idea on another topic to cover in this chick-raising blog post: how to tell if your chick is a boy or a girl!

Before I discuss that topic, let me introduce our new chicks and tell you a little about the chicken breeds involved in their lineage:

Our new chicks are the two patterned ones at the top of this photo. The light-colored chick at the top of the photo probably won’t be at our house for long; I’ll explain why a little farther down this post.

We picked out two bantam Cochin mixes. The man we bought them from had hundreds of chicks in so many breeds and varieties! He has been crossing Cochins, Silkies, Naked Necks, and Frizzles to design some interesting and unusual chickens.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with chicken breeds, chickens are categorized into “standard“ (usually weighing 4 – 8+ pounds) and “bantam“ (usually weighing between 1 – 3 pounds). Cochins come in both sizes and are very fluffy with feathered feet. Silkies usually only come in bantam size and are known for their hair-like down, rather than regular feathers; they also have bluish-black skin and extra toes. Naked Necks come in both sizes and have no feathers on their necks (which is creepy-looking in my opinion! lol). Frizzles come in both sizes and many varieties; the one defining trait is that all frizzles “look like they stuck their finger in a light socket,” as the old saying goes.

~~~ Sexing chicks. ~~~

Male or female? Cockerel or pullet? (“Cockerel” and “pullet” are simply chicken jargon for roosters and hens that are less than one year old.) Other than twiddling your thumbs for about six months until your chicken either crows or pops out an egg, how can you figure out which one you have?

If you’re looking at a fuzzy little day-old chick, I’d say just flip a coin and hope for the best if you are desiring a certain gender. Even professional “chicken sexers” can’t give you a 100% guarantee that they have correctly labelled their chicks.

However, when we added our two new chicks (who were at least two or three weeks old) to the three chicks we bought a week ago, we could say with confidence that we had at least two roosters. Within moments, the largest Rhode Island Red (whom I had already been suspecting could be a rooster) and the smallest Cochin (the one at the top of the previous photo) stood toe-to-toe and began the familiar “rooster dance” (that’s what I’ve termed it, anyway).Dodging and weaving their heads, they circled each other with eyes locked and hackles raised before starting to peck and chase each other.

The Rhode Island Red soon had the upper hand, due to sheer size advantage, and periodically used his beak to grab the back of the other’s head feathers and give them a good pull and shake. Unfortunately, the tiny newcomer is quite spunky and would not submit well enough to satisfy the larger chick**, so we ended up dividing the brooder box into two sections to separate them for now. The box has been peaceful and quiet for several hours since we broke up the boys.

{**1/23/16 UPDATE: Boy, was this a signal I should have heeded! I took the chick back to the seller a few days later (he had offered to trade out any roosters), and he talked me into keeping it. “I can tell by the color of her feathers that this is a girl,” he says, “because I breed these all the time. I’d bet a hundred dollars this is a girl.” I wish I’d taken that bet! Click here to see a photography post about this rooster’s antics. What a little horror he is!}

Side note: For anyone who wondered what “hackles” are, here are photos of one of our hens with hers lowered and raised. Chickens can fluff up various sections of their feathers at will. I barely missed catching a photo where the hen and the mocking bird both had their hackles raised during a mini-stand-off at the water bucket. (You can see another example of this with my neighbor’s escaped rooster who was wooing my hens in a previous post.)

If you have two (or more) chicks who frequently dance around and attack each other, they are very likely to both be roosters. As chicks, the boys seem to be much more preoccupied with the idea of dominance than the girls do.

If all your chicks are of the same breed, there are other indicators that you may have a cockerel:

A chick that has larger feet than all the others is possibly a male.

A chick whose comb and wattles grow bigger and/or turn red much faster than the others is likely to be a male.

As he gets older, a cockerel will develop what is called “saddle feathers” on his back near his tail; these are longer, more pointed, and droop downward compared to feathers on a hen’s back.

In most breeds, a cockerel will also eventually grow long, curved “sickle feathers” that hang over the end of his tail.

For various reasons, we have eventually sold every rooster we’ve raised. At the moment I have no desire to have another, though we discovered my neighbor’s lonely escaped rooster sleeping beside our hens last night when we went to lock up the coop. Even a five-foot chain link fence cannot stop true love. ha ha

Last time we got chicks I only bought two and was hoping for females. They were Blue-Laced Red Wyandottes, a beautiful breed that I had wanted for a while. I thought, “We probably won’t be lucky enough to get two girls, but surely at least one of them will be.” Can you guess how many were roosters? Yeah, both of them were.

Here is our biggest of the two boys: “Lacey” the rooster. (You can tell by the name we were expecting him to become a hen. The same thing happened with our first rooster, “Buttercup.” Poor guys.) He was HUGE! We still have several of his large, long-legged daughters.

Family relationships take many forms, ranging from fabulous fulfillment to frightening failure. Today I want to focus on the brighter side of this spectrum.

A special bond I’ve shared throughout my life is the multi-generational “girl power” shared between grandmother, mother, and grandchild. I remember loving the time spent with my mom & grandmother as a child, whether we were shopping at Yellow Front or Alco (remember those old stores?), taking camping trips on motorcycles to places like Yellowstone National Park, or turning up the radio to sing and dance in the living room. Even while typing this post, I sit here smiling as I recall those special times spent with my loved-ones.

My grandmother is no longer living, but, thankfully, this triple bond has filtered down a generation to include my daughter. She is blessed to be near both of her grandmothers and has enjoyed many memorable experiences and traditions with them.

My daughter can fondly recall many days with her grandmothers that involved taking walks, playing games, camping, afternoon shopping trips, picnics, and many other fun times. She honored me a few days ago by saying she hoped to raise her future children similar to the way we are raising her and hoped that her children will have as great of a childhood as she’s had. How many teenagers are that grateful and think in such terms? (Wow, I’m so blessed!)

This month is an exciting time for our family trio — it’s time to go on our third annual Girl Trip to Hot Springs, AR! Don’t get me wrong, we love the men in our family! But there’s a unique joy in having a girls’ day out to laugh and play and do all those girly things we girls do. ha ha This year we are bringing one of my daughter’s best friends with us, and I have a nice surprise in store for them all (I’d mention it here, but I don’t want anyone to find out prematurely).

The three of us have become photo bugs this year and are looking forward to honing our photography skills while capturing images of beautiful outdoor spaces and interesting architecture. Hopefully, I will soon have a heart full of new happy memories and a camera full of impressive (ha ha) photos to share with you…

~~~~~

Do you have special activities or traditions with your friends or family that you’d like to share? I would enjoy hearing your stories!

Due to a burst of hateful anger I recently received from a total stranger, I was toying with the idea of writing a post about impatience or rudeness. Then I discovered a blog called introversion, inc. with this post that handles the topic quite well…

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Most of the photos on this site were taken by Merry Hearts Medicine (except the few that are public domain and all the ones credited with a name and link). I put a lot of time and effort into them, so please respect copyright laws regarding the material on this blog.
~~~
I'm adding this copyright statement because you may be just like I was when I first began blogging: I thought nearly any photo on the internet was free to grab and use as I please. After blogging and dabbling in photography myself, I understand why people feel so proud and protective of their work.
Thanks!
~~~
Click here to learn more about copyrights.
~~~
Click here for info on finding photos you can use without copyright infringement.